Why your Sales Tools are Useless without Social Media

We’ve all heard it hundreds of times. Social media is the new way to reach today’s consumers. For the small business owner still using services like Salesforce to manage customer databases, implementing social media can be involved. Sure, you can add in social media sites for various contacts, but including data about those contacts’ social media contacts is impossible.

Social123 goes beyond other databases to search social media sites and bring back relevant contact data. Using Social123, you can learn helpful information about your current contacts, such as their social media pages, number of followers and friends, and posted contact information. But the information isn’t limited to only your business’s contacts. You can trace information on your competition’s social media contacts and on others in your industry.

“Social123 micro-monitors social media outlets for key word mentions and brings back contact data for direct marketing,” Social123 senior sales executive Bo Turner states. “Our customers call it Google Ad Words for Social Media. We also append existing contact databases with publicly available information from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn – and score them based off of their content mentions so you can reach out to the people who matter most.”

This just reinforces the point that nothing posted publicly online is private. While customers have taken great strides over the years to keep their names off telemarketers’ phone lists and direct mailers’ mailing lists, those same customers willingly post phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and even children’s pictures and names on social media sites for the world to find. As businesses learn to harvest this information to help with sales, will individuals learn to keep this information locked down?

Social123 only simplifies a process that’s already available. Through simple Google searches, sales personnel and small business owners can research prospects prior to meetings and find out their kids birthdays, as well as see pictures of their last vacation. While this may not be information a small business owner would reveal in the sales meeting–after all, you wouldn’t want to come across as a creepy stalker–you may find common ground in the information you find online. A shared interest in a sports team or a similar hobby, for instance.

Services like Social123 are just the beginning of what social media can do for database sites like Salesforce. Imagine being able to pull a list of every car dealership owner in your area with a Facebook page that includes more than 3,000 followers. Then imagine extending that to only those who fit a certain demographic or level of education. You could even pull all business owners in your area who graduated from your alma mater.

Of course, if you’re interested in social media integration, don’t overlook the services provided by other database providers. While Salesforce’s Data.com and Hoovers aren’t yet specializing in social media integration, they provide valuable contact information that smaller services can’t provide. It might be worth integrating Social123 with Salesforce, while using the power of Data.com. With these services combined, you’ll be sure to make the most out of your database services.

Stephanie Faris

Stephanie is a freelance writer and young adult/middle grade novelist, who worked in information systems for more than a decade. Her first book, 30 Days of No Gossip, will be released by Simon and Schuster in spring 2014. She lives in Nashville with her husband.